Behavioral parent training may benefit low-income families

Action Points

Note that this unblinded randomized trial found that a program educating fathers on how to engage in shared book reading with their pre-school children improved parenting and child behavioral outcomes.

Since many of these outcomes were father-reported, the results could be biased due to effects independent of the intervention.

A parenting program where fathers from low-income communities practiced shared book reading -- an interactive activity in which the adult uses prompts to actively engage the child -- benefited both the fathers and the children, reported a team of NYU researchers.

Fathers who were part of the shared book reading group saw significant improvements in parenting behaviors, child behaviors, and the child's language development, with a more than 30% improvement in parenting and school readiness outcomes, wrote Anil Chacko, PhD, of New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology.

"Unlike other parenting programs, fathers in this program were not recruited to work on parenting or reduce child behavior problems, but to learn -- with other fathers -- skills to support their children's school readiness, which may remove stigma and support openness among fathers in supporting their children ... the findings were particularly noteworthy given the study's population of low-income, Spanish-speaking, immigrant fathers."

The researchers analyzed data from the Fathers Supporting Success in Preschoolers (FSSP) program, an 8-week intervention to improve parenting behaviors among low-income, Spanish-speaking fathers and their children.

All participants were recruited from New York Head Start centers, which provide free child development activities and educational programs for children ages 3 and 4 and their families. Fathers were randomized to the shared book reading intervention (n=64) or placed on a waitlist (n=62), which served as the control group.

The intervention consisted of eight 90-minute sessions in which small groups watched videos of fathers reading with children and displaying exaggerated errors. The fathers were asked to identify the issues and discuss better approaches to these interactions, with the intention that they would practice the methods and strategies at home with their child during shared book reading.

The researchers collected father-reported data on parenting and child behaviors, parental stress, and depressive symptoms, as well as standardized assessments of language, both before and immediately after the intervention. Attendance data were also collected as an indirect measure of engagement.

Chacko and colleagues found that the parenting and child behaviors and language development skills of the children who participated in the study program showed significant improvement compared with those on the waitlist.

Additionally, the average attendance rate for the eight weekly sessions was 79% (SD = 8.32%), a substantially higher rate than previous parenting programs for fathers, the researchers noted.*

Despite the intervention's success, Chacko and colleagues acknowledged that shared book reading may not be the best approach for all families. Instead, interventions should be tailored to specific demographics in order to increase the likelihood of success.

"This study demonstrates that how we package an intervention is important to engaging a population," Chacko told MedPage Today, explaining that one size doesn't fit all for behavioral parent training.

He noted that while many fathers found the FSSP program viable, there were certain geographic locations where fathers were not interested in an intervention that focused on academic readiness: "Developing a program that is not explicitly parent focused but parent and child focused -- one that is not deficit driven (improving problematic parenting) but focused on skill development (improving children's language skills), one centered on identified areas of interest of/relevance to fathers (academic readiness through shared book reading) rather than that which may be less relevant (getting the child to do chores), and developmentally appropriate for the child would be an intuitively appealing and engaging format for fathers to learn how to enhance their parenting," Chacko said via email.

Further research should be done to understand the preferences of different segments of the parent population in order to develop behavioral parent training-focused interventions for all preferences, he concluded.

Funding for the research was provided by a cooperative agreement from the CDC.

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